[K-FILM SUMMER SPECIAL - Part 2] Lee Joon-Ik’s 님은 먼곳에 (Sunny)

If we use the last twenty years as barometer, perhaps the “loudest” statement about the Vietnam War was Jung Ji-Young’s wonderful 하얀전쟁 (White Badge) from 1992, with a superb Ahn Sung-Gi playing a writer dealing with post-war guilt and desperation. Less famous but equally interesting is Kim Yoo-Min’s 푸른 옷소매 (Green Sleeves) from a year earlier, starring Hur Joon-Ho as a vietcong soldier. Although there were brief and passing mentions about the subject both on TV and the big screen, we’d have to wait until 2004’s 알포인트 (R-Point) for the guilt to make its presence felt.

Exploding with style and atmosphere, Gong Su-Chang’s debut was able to create one of the most frightening and claustrophobic setups in recent Korean Cinema, along with a lingering sense of guilt about the Vietnam War. And let’s not forget the truly badass casting comprised of theater-trained veterans and talented youngsters like Lee Seon-Gyun and Oh Tae-Kyung. It’s a shame it did have to go the “Sadako is grumpy and wants to kill EVERYBODY before breakfast” way towards the end, but it’s still one of the best debuts of recent memory, and amongst the most atmospheric Korean films of the last decade.

Almost unknown, save for its appearance on a KOFIC compilation DVD, is the documentary 미친 시간 (Mad Minutes) by Lee Mario. This was a heavy hitter, interviewing Nam veterans and Vietnamese families affected by the war in a pretty open manner (albeit with a witless Michael Moore-ish overtly one-sided slant), and showing how some of those atrocities impacted their lives, and those of their descendants. It would be silly to ask such complexity from Korean TV Dramas, even for a fervent defender of the medium like myself, but in recent years there has been a sort of cultural reconciliation of sorts between the two countries, through the Korean Wave and such works as 황금신부 (Golden Bride). The Minister of Culture and various other diplomats will be happy indeed. Too bad it was crap. C’est la vie.

But we did leave out one singular detail: whatever guilt for ‘Nam ever made its way to Korean cathode ray tubes and shiny multiplexes, it was mostly the male flavored one. What happened to the ladies who waited for their “nim” to come home, with the significant possibility of having to live the rest of their days as a widow (in the Korea of the 70s, that’d be like a limping gazelle with “eat me” written in blood all over)? Sunny, just like the Korean title implies, goes to that far place to find the husband who never really professed his love for her. It was 1971, the war in ‘Nam was raging, and protagonist Sun-Yi (Soo Ae) couldn’t give an octopus’ rear end if the napalm smelled good in the morning. She had to find her man, even if that meant going all the way there, becoming a singer named Sunny, and prancing around in ozone layer-damaging skimpy clothes.

It’s interesting to hear Lee’s reasoning for making his first female-centered film. He had been accused of using female characters as mere salad dressing in the past, criticism which certainly holds up – after all, all that comes to mind when you say Lee Joon-Ik and women is Kim Seon-Ah in 황산벌 (Once Upon a Time in the Battlefield) telling General Gyebaek that “tigers die for their fur, men die for their name.” Lee simply wanted to show, for once, the war through a woman’s eyes. In some ways it’s quite a revolutionary idea, since most of the history we know was written by men and for men. Lee was quick to stop some journalists’ overzealous need for controversy when he also said this is not a feminist film, turning what historically had been a rather passive role into what would become anachronistic “activism.” No, it’s simply to show how looking at history through feminine lenses can change things dramatically.

Lee says the spark which ignited this production came from looking at a picture of Janis Joplin a year ago. It was shot during the Vietnam War, and it reminded him of Kim Chu-Ja, one of the most popular singers of the 70s, especially after rock legend Shin Jung-Hyeon took her under his wings. Kim was sexy, enormously talented, innovative, and exploding with energy on the stage, something which seems to fit Soo Ae’s Sunny pretty well. We could in many ways connect all this to Lee’s past two works 라디오 스타 (Radio Star) and 즐거운 인생 (The Happy Life) in a virtual “music trilogy,” although Lee denies any particular connection. Using music to show how pop culture shaped history is a very astute strategy, one which could pay huge dividends at the box office, something Lee has been fighting with for his entire life.

You’d think after something like 왕의 남자 (The King and the Clown), any director would stop and stare at the mountain. Of money earned, of expectations raised, of worldwide fame gained, with that sweet cherry on top called pressure. But Lee Joon-Ik doesn’t seem to care. He went in a completely different direction with the lovely Radio Star and made good money; The Happy Life seemed to be something of a by-product of his past work but it had its fans (I could be amongst them, if the damn DVD came out. The hell are we waiting for?) and lost just a tiny bit, and now he’s back into the fight with the most expensive film of his career. Sunny cost almost 7 Billion Won to make, with another three-odd billion for marketing, but considering the kind of production this is, it’s not such a huge figure. As always, he was able to do things rapidly (56 shooting days, despite six weeks in Thailand shooting the Vietnam parts), contain costs, and do everything he needed.

Would it be surprising if, the moment Sunny debuts, Lee will already be working on his next projects? He’s preparing a sageuk set in the Three Kingdoms period about a famous Buddhist Temple’s foundation; a film based on the Korean War, a fantasy and another drama. For many reasons, Sunny might actually become the surprise of the season. Of course with such a budget it’s obvious the release will be wide, but with 좋은 놈, 나쁜 놈, 이상한 놈 (The Good, The Bad, and The Weird) likely to monopolize screens for its first week of release, when the onslaught of Kim Ji-Woon’s kimchi western starts toning down word of mouth for Lee’s film might actually make it a marathon runner. Just like Sunny, going all the way to Vietnam to find her dear.

The film opens on July 24th.

LEE JOON-IK INTERVIEW

It’s curious you chose not only the Vietnam War, but a story seen through a female perspective.
We went through the colonial period and the Korean war, but we haven’t been able to rationalize our modern history. You could see the Vietnam War as something that changed the face of Korean society and the way people lived. I used Sun-Yi to portray how women felt in that particular period, and through Jeong-Nam (Jung Jin-Young) the chimera of money which led people all the way to Vietnam. It’s at the same time a story that focuses on the individual, but it inevitably ends up involving the family. And that’s just our history. I guess to women that period felt like asking themselves why, of all people, it was their husband or son that had to go. Unless we’re talking of Angelina Jolie and G.I. Joe, that is (laughs). In many ways it’s an obvious reaction. If what we experienced so far was always HIStory, I think this 21th Century will put the spotlight on HERstory, how women see the world.

So that might be the reason why, in the film, Korean soldiers are portrayed as being there just for the money, American soldiers as usurpers, and Vietcong just represent peace. This portrayal could be controversial to many.
I think misinterpretations might be possible. But I have no problem with that, I’m ready to accept even those. You need to differentiate between something wrong and something that’s just different. Stressing something as different, not wrong, is what democracy is all about.

You ended the shoot under budget once again. The initial plan was for 7 Billion, but you wrapped up everything at 6.9, thirty million short.
I didn’t do that just for the sake of statistics. I just shot everything as we planned, so some money was left at the end. That’s because I always follow the script. All of the five films I’ve shot so far have ended slightly under budget, because I shoot no extra scenes that aren’t in the script. But of course I do shoot the occasional bridging scene on the set, whenever a transitional shot is needed.

What was it that caught your attention?
First off, the subject itself. The ugliest sin mankind committed in the 20th Century was war, and the Vietnam War put a final mark on the East-West ideology the West had created, with 300,000 of our soldiers joining in. Of course Hollywood made many films about the Vietnam War, but that was merely affirmation of American imperialism under the guise of reflecting on their misdeeds. You can’t really accept it as sincere introspection. Watching those films, didn’t we all feel bad about American soldiers dying, and not a thing about Vietcong soldiers facing the same fate? As a fellow Asian, that is. We’re still polluted by cultural flunkeyism when it comes to the US, but people really don’t realize that. So I thought we needed an Asian approach to the Vietnam War. And then there was Sun-Yi, a woman striking through men’s battlefields, it felt dramatic, lyrical and epic. After all, films are sentimental products. Those two elements, I thought, were enough to spend 7 Billion on it.

Vietnam is the focus, but you shot in Thailand. Is there any particular reason for that?
It’s hard to get permission to shoot in Vietnam [ed. R-Point shot in Cambodia, for instance]. It’s just much more comfortable there. We shot at this place called Kanchanaburi, famous for the bridge on the River Kwai. There’s plenty of armed forces there, and they were easy to work with. That’s the reason why the Thai crew worked in Hollywood fashion. Had we shot in Hollywood they’d have started running the ship, but we could do things our way there, so it was much better. I think it was very efficient and effective. You’ll see it in the film, but that kind of man power and equipment for just 7 Billion will seem hard to believe.

Reading the script, not only the Vietnam War, but also details about the showbiz of the time transpire [ed. Sun-Yi travels Vietnam in a sort of Korean equivalent of USO groups].
Writer Choi Seok-Hwan looked for all the singers and bands who went to Vietnam as part of one of those support groups, and interviewed them. It all started from a photo he spotted on the Internet, and we thought even that, despite being in war times, had a certain romanticism of its own.

It’s the first time you focus on a female protagonist. When people complained of the lack of strong female characters in your film, you always replied it was because you don’t know women. So did you finally get to know them?
I thought it could become my first step towards that. A while ago I met director Bae Chang-Ho at a wedding, as he was officiating there. He said before getting married he saw the world simply through his own two eyes. But right after, he felt another pair of eyes. That passage really made a big impact on me, the idea you can gain another perspective through your wife. It was surprising. I think I started seeing the world through Sun-Yi’s eyes in this film. Shooting films focusing on men all that time I guess subconsciously I ended up throwing their inner demons at the screen. But through Sun-Yi, I started realizing how narrow-minded they were, always trying to legitimize what they were doing, but at the end of the day not being able to make their women forgive them. There are still too many things I don’t know about the female perspective, so I don’t know if men will get the chance to atone for their narrow-mindedness, but I thought they’d at least be forgiven.

With Once Upon a Time in the Battlefield and The King and the Clown you made a mockery of the mainstream. But after that, Radio Star and The Happy Life seemed to focus on a certain sense of compassion for the non-mainstream. Looking at this film’s subject, it seems you’re going back to the past, in a sort of circle.
I don’t think so. You could say this film combines all of my past work into one entity. The war of Once Upon a Time in the Battlefield, the epic feel of The King and The Clown, the stage of Radio Star and The Happy Life. That’s because Sun-Yi enters a war support group as a singer. I think the idea of one woman, standing in bikini in front of men her age and singing goes past the shame, and shows a kind of sublimity, of loftiness. You also shouldn’t expect love that isn’t of the timid kind, and spectacle for spectacle’s sake. This film shows the greatness of femininity, when it comes into contact with extreme masculinity, and how it reacts to it. It could be just a part, but the only thing that can shelter that kind of world is femininity and nothing else. I never really thought seriously about feminism per se, but I think this film examines femininity, filtered through the abuse of masculinity and machismo. I was curious how the world of men would look, filtered through a woman’s point of view, and wanted to show what kind of coward men can become, when they try to justify their behavior. When, right in front of that woman, the cowardice falls to the ground, that’s when sincerity starts to emerge. For that final moment, we went to war, we took flights, we did just about everything, I guess.

SOURCES
Daum News: [1], [2], [3], [4]
Cine21: [1]